亚色影库app

An open access publication of the 亚色影库app & Sciences
Fall 2007

Spring鈥檚 So Sad, We Want to Know Why

Author
Molly McQuade
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Molly McQuade's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including 鈥淭he Paris Review,鈥 鈥淭he American Scholar,鈥 and 鈥淧oetry,鈥 as well as in her book 鈥淏arbarism鈥 (2000). A new collection of her poems will be published later this year. She has received fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Council of Teachers of English, among others. She has also written a collection of essays about poetry, 鈥淪tealing Glimpses鈥 (1999), and edited 鈥淏y Herself鈥 (2000), an anthology of essays about poetry.

Spring鈥檚 So Sad, We Want to Know Why


Spring鈥檚 so sad, we want to know why鈥
is it the mist that slips us from our baths
with memory of warmth never to be ours?

Beautiful isn鈥檛 enough, she says,
face floating near a simple oval bowl
flowered beyond whatever we can know,

and likely to outstay the ones who do.
Cornered, somehow, by the bowl, we stare
and wonder how complete we can become,

slipped from likeness on a night of spring,
let alone into a pause of stars,
mass and smallness merging everywhere,

leaving us to sulk and sink in self.
Sweet and simple in its lonesome trust,
spring will keep us simple till we pass.